


Villains Don't Get Happy Endings

by thespoot



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2014-05-10
Packaged: 2018-01-24 04:50:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1592282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thespoot/pseuds/thespoot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is just a one-shot for what was going through Rumple's mind from death to rebirth.  Remember, villains don't get happy endings. Spoilers for 3x11 Going Home and 3x15 Quiet Minds.<br/>(This is what happens when you don't want to study for your finals...)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Villains Don't Get Happy Endings

I lay there on the floor where he had thrown me, where that bastard had left me once more, contorting my whole body as if that would somehow help me remove the accursed bracer.  I knew it wouldn’t, of course.  I’m not stupid.  But we all do strange things when our survival instincts take hold.  If there is one thing I’m good at, dearie, it’s surviving.

_I've come too far for this! For them!_

It’s funny, isn’t it, to call that man a bastard.  I’m the one without a father.  And Baelfire, too.  My sweet boy...

I screamed in frustration as I felt my fingernails bend backwards from clawing at the seemingly innocuous bit of leather.  The soft, supple band mocked me.  Of course that wretched creature had made it.  Of course he had somehow poisoned Cora with it.  Of course it somehow found it’s way back to me.  As long as I lived, I would never be rid of that thing I had once called Papa.

As long as I lived...

A scream ripped from my chest again and I pounded the floor with my fist.  No! I had come too far!  I had gone to Neverland to die and yet survived.  The boy had not been my undoing, I lived!  I had saved that damnable, sweet boy - my grandson.  I saved him and lived.  Me.  Hadn’t I beat that seer at her own game?  I won.  I had won, damn you.  

My eyes lit upon the old sword he had kicked away from me.  My shop was filled with so many things from the curse.  All of them were talismans in their own way.  Each had been brought by the owner even though the owners rarely came to claim them.  All of them products of true love or fear, bravery or cowardice, vengeance or selflessness, but most of all, of power.  I stumbled to my feet, all too aware of the seconds that were ticking by.  Peter Pan was a showman. He was who I had learned all my tricks from.  But when he was done toying with my family, prolonging their agony, he would get down to business and their lives would end.

My fingers tightened around the hilt of the blade.  My family.  I must do this for my family.  For Bae, my boy.  Henry, my grandson.  And for...for Belle.  A sob racked my body.  Oh, dear Belle.  He could not harm Belle.  Being with me had only brought her misery and pain.  Bae had not had a choice about me being his father, but Belle had come back to me over and over again.  She came back after every hurt, every dark moment.  She could not die because of my stupidity, my cowardice.  She deserved so much better than I.

The sword felt heavy in my hand.  I could not pick it up.  I must live for them, but to live for them I must have my magic.  It would be swift.  The blade was sharp.  A hand could be reattached later, I must live.

As long as you live, dearie...

I cried out again.  I could not lift the sword, coward that I am.  I felt hot, wet tears on my cheeks.  This was not it’s purpose and the sword would not allow itself to be used this way.  But I must live, I must survive.  Wretched creature, him and I both.  We deserved each other.

As long I live, the world will suffer Peter Pan.  

Damn the seer, damn her!  

A worm, wasn’t that what he called me, dearie?  A worm.  A pink, helpless thing.  My family was in danger and I couldn’t even cut off my hand to help them.  Hadn’t I done this before?  The bitch had said my family was in danger, that I would leave my son fatherless by my actions, and hadn’t I had it in me then to take a war maul to my leg?  What was the difference now?  

Because it wasn’t what I must do.  I knew that.  I knew that in Neverland.  I knew when I agreed to Regina’s little plan that it was only borrowed time.  I knew the prophecy.  But oh how I had clung to that vile, vain hope of life!  I fell for Pan’s trap through her, that whelp of Cora’s whom I had trained and turned and twisted to do my bidding.  He had played on my sense of survival.  And now he was here, now he was winning.

And now he would take my son.  He would take them all.

I growled, rage replacing my fear.  A dark, roiling hatred filled my body yet with no release since my magic was blocked.  It was comforting.  That old hatred had fueled my magic for centuries.  My tears stopped.  This business with the sword was an exercise in futility.  Every second wasted was a second closer to being too late.  I had fallen for trap after trap.  The maul had been the first step on the seer’s path.  I had made a decision that left my boy fatherless and now it was time to take the final step.  My boy would lose his father again, but at least my grandson would have his.

Never build a cage you can’t get out of, eh, Papa?  Lucky for you, I built this one - not you.

They all stood there in the street, immobile.  It had begun.  There was not much left of my heart, dearie, but even this sight twisted it in my chest.  Belle, Bae, Henry...all together and all about to die when he was done taunting them.  I didn’t care so much about the others.  Emma, perhaps.  The little savior meant something to my dear Baelfire, so perhaps there was room for her too.  But the rest, to hell with them all.  I must save my family.

_Stay away from them._

My feet carried me inexorably closer to my doom.  We were both worms, he and I.  We blindly made our way through this earth, feeding on others and their dreams in order to achieve our ends.  How many lives had we each destroyed in an effort to get what we wanted?  He and I, we were the same, dearie.  Villains.  I kept him talking, kept him making his threats.

I said my goodbyes to my Bae and my Belle.  Two people who deserved so much better than the likes of me.  At least I could do this one thing for them.  I could give them their lives.  

I did not need magic for this.  My shadow found me, like all shadows do.  Before Belle, the only one I could trust was myself.  And who is truer than your own shadow, dearie?  He had kept my dagger hidden, and now he returned it to me for one last act.

_You see, the only way for you to die, is if we both die. And now... now, I am ready._

He never saw it coming.  My embrace, that is.  This man had abandoned me, sacrificed me, and haunted me my whole life.  He would kill my family in the next few seconds.  And so, when my arms encircled him, he could only look shocked.  And when my dagger plunged deep into his back, the shock disappeared.

Painfully obvious, I’m sure, but a dagger in the heart hurts, dearie.  It hurts even more when it comes from one you loved.  That wicked blade was made to cause pain.  We felt every ridge and serration.  It sliced through his chest and buried deep within mine.  For the first time in our lives, my papa and I had something to share.

He pleaded with me.  I suppose I had expected something more like acceptance or forgiveness, but instead, he pleaded for his life like the true coward he was.  All my life, I had lived in this creature’s shadow.  This day, I was the better man.  It was a hollow consolation.

_Oh, but I'm a villain. And villains don't get happy endings._

A villain.  Nothing but a villain.  I twisted the dagger deep within us.

As that golden light embraced me, I felt the hatred and anger that fueled me slip away.  The scales that had marred my appearance and twisted my soul in the Enchanted Forest melted away.  I felt content.  The pain in my chest receded, replace by a warmth I had not known I had missed.  There was no weight in my arms or against my chest, no warm blood mingling and seeping into my clothes.  I was alone.  

No one would be there to greet me, I knew that.  None would be happy to see me on the other side.  No one...who?  Who would I expect?  What was I doing again?  My life was pain and as memories of pain receded, so to did the rest of me.

After centuries of toil to bring my son back to me, I could rest.  My son?  Bae?  Rest.  Sleep.  Dream.  

Perhaps this wasn’t so bad.  Perhaps I’d get a happy ending after all.

I don’t know how long I floated in that warm, golden light.  I felt as small as a geometric dot and yet as large as the universe. It may have been seconds or it may have been centuries.  It didn’t matter.  I rested for eternity.

But in a moment as long as it was short, the peace shattered.  I felt ice run through veins a mile long.  I panicked and swung too many limbs in too many directions as the light receded.  I scrambled to hold on to serenity that had been there just seconds before.  No! Hadn’t I earned this? This was mine now! My happy ending!  

If I screamed, there was no air to carry the sound.  A freezing, cloying wetness pressed at me in the darkness.  As I opened a mouth as wide as the ocean to scream with the fear and anger of a storm at sea, it filled me.  It clogged my throat and gummed my eyes - viscous like oil and as cold as the grave.  I thrashed against the substance.  I was drowning! Somebody help!

The more I fought, the less I could move until I was frozen in place.  Whatever warmth I had felt was gone, replaced by darkness and cold.  Even memory of it began to fade despite clawing at the shreds of happiness ripped away from my mind.  Fear coursed through me as I heard gears turning and clicking in place.  I stood frozen.

And I felt it, dearie.  I felt the wind.  And snow.  And magic.  

I could feel the dark magic that had brought me out of the afterglow of death.  It clung to me, staining everything like oil floating on top of water.  It was on me, in me. It was me.  I breathed deep, feeling the sting of the snow flecked air.  Something was in my hand.

What was this place? This new hell?

Slowly, I opened my eyes.  White. Silver. Black. Wicked.  

That wicked blade was what was in my hand.  My power and my doom, held in a single jagged shard of metal.  Out of reflex, I tightened my grip on it.  It felt at once familiar and terrifying.  

_-Rumple?_

There! A light in the darkness! My eyes shot up and beheld the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.  I knew her.  I knew her.  

Belle.

Wait, Belle?

...Bae?

...No.

My memories came rushing back in a torrent.  It was as if I had relived the pain and suffering of three centuries of scheming and torture in the blink of an eye.  I had died for them.  I had died.  I had won.  Yet if I was standing here, then there was only one place we could be.  The Dark One’s Vault.  And if I was standing here, then there was only one thing that could have happened.  Someone else had died.  Someone else had won.

I cradled my son in my arms and yet again I was trapped.  Indeed, dearie, there’s no happy endings for villains.  A new demon from my past, a new showman. Let her talk, let her talk, let her talk and then we’ll see who wins.  With the last strands of golden light magic left to me, I held my son to me.

But light magic, even light magic from beyond death, is incompatible with dark magic.  I felt them war within me.  Silver white light encompassed us both as I held his head to my chest like he was a little boy again.  A lifetime of evil threatened to snuff out what little good was left to me.  My dear boy, my dear Bae, don’t leave me again.

_-You can't hang on to both of them._

The witch was right.  I couldn’t.  It would kill us both.  I dropped the dagger.  In that selfless act, what was left of that golden light gained enough strength for one last volley.  Who knew I had it in me, dearie?  I took my son within me.  If he could not live in his body, then he could live in mine.  My life for my son.  I could still win.

Papa? Bae?

It burns! What is this? Dark Magic, dearie, dark magic.  See how I sacrificed myself for you?  I’m gonna win.  Let me out! Let us out! Ding dong the witch is dead.  A hammer to the knee, that’s how I came home.  I came home for you.  It’s a pirate’s life for me.  Wendy!  Tallahassee.  I should never have left her.  Baelfire.  I know you’re Baelfire.  So much death, so much pain.  We never made it to Tallahassee.  All I have is an empty heart and a chipped cup.  

_-You’ve got your son, but you’ve lost yourself._

He’s my son.  Henry.  Baelfire.  He’s my son.  I should never have left you, Bae.  You left me.  You left me.  I never break a deal.  You broke our deal.  The boy was my undoing.  A curse to find you, a curse to keep you.  Dark magic.  You’re my happy ending.  This is redemption.  Light magic.  See past the mask, past the monster.

_No Rumple! No room! No room! No Rumple!_

August tricked me.  I’m trying to teach my girlfriend to drive a stick.  Walking stick, doomed by my choices.  Coward. I ran.  I ran and ran.  A mute can still draw a picture.  Flypaper for nightmares.  Let’s keep it.  Memories.  These are all memories.  It hurts.  This is what I left you with.  This is what you gave me.  Flypaper for nightmares.  You’re as dark as they say.  Darker, dearie, much darker.  You spared them.  That arrow never misses.  I wanted to look for you but I was too afraid.  Flypaper for nightmares.  

_-Enough of this.  Your madness is your burden, not mine_

Remember, dearie, all magic comes with a price.

Remember, dearie, all magic comes with a price.

Remember, dearie, all magic comes with a price.

Remember, dearie, all magic comes with a price.

Remember, dearie, all magic comes with a price.

Remember, dearie, all magic comes with a price.

 

Remember, dearie, all magic comes with a price.

 

_You feed the madness, and it feeds on you.  You feed the madness, and it feeds on you.  All the voices in my head, will be quiet when I’m dead._

  
  



End file.
